I'd love to help you out designing a case for the R-Pi, one direction cableing is something I'm already thinking off, as well as redireting the stauts LED light with a light guide for a stackable footprint.

Only one slight stumbling block though, the actual dimensions & positioning of the sockets on the production board (I just got my confirmation email from RS today, so may be in for a very long wait til I get my hands on one)

I must agree with you that the LEDs are a concern for me. Most (if not all) of the designs that I've seen either ignore the LEDs or use clear plastic to extend the LED (http://marcoalici.wordpress.com/). This post mentions that LEDs can be controlled via GPIO, as soon as I can get some boards I'll have a developer see what we can do.

There are some models out there and there so we can get an accurate idea of the R-Pi board.

I have a pretty good idea of what I'm looking for in a case (i have a similar design on paper) can I send a scan of that to you? As far as the case on the R-Pi forum goes, I need to add a LCD to it maybe I could sketch up a design for that that I could send through to you?